


The Pensione

by flippyspoon



Category: Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood
Genre: Bittersweet, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Romance, what happened in italy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-07-27 20:01:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20051734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flippyspoon/pseuds/flippyspoon
Summary: What happened in Italy.





	The Pensione

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jembu23](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jembu23/gifts).

> I REALLY LOVE THIS SHIP, I HOPE LOTS OF PEOPLE WRITE FOR IT. I NEED FOOD.
> 
> Jembu, here's a little one for you. <3
> 
> That marriage to Francesca's never gonna last.

_ Italy _

The studio pays for Rick to stay in a boutique pensione near Cinecitta Studios in Rome.

Rick insists Cliff bunk in the next room over.

Which is very convenient.

Rick’s first few days on the set of the first movie are a little rocky. The director  _ mostly _ speaks English but there’s a translator around just in case. Soon enough, Rick starts to become fluent in Armando even if he isn’t fluent in actual Italian. Things run more smoothly after that. Soon enough, Rick is kinda having a blast.

And on days off, Rick and Cliff eat pasta and drink the best wine they can find and have a grand old time.

Rick blames the sweet air of Florence for what happens when they make a long weekend out of driving up there as soon as they get the chance. They head up to the countryside and sit in a grassy field and eat and drink and Rick hasn’t felt so relaxed in ages, but then it’s always easier to relax around Cliff. 

Cliff who is just now lying on his back in the grass, his shirt riding up as he grins at Rick.

“Thanks for bringing me along on this whole thing. It’s been fun.” Cliff’s hair is blowing around in the breeze and he scratches his stomach so his t-shirt rides up a little more.

“Oh yeah yeah, no-no problem, ole buddy,” Rick mutters.

Nothing happens then but Rick is dazed. It’s not that he’s never thought about Cliff like that.

It’s not even that he’s never fooled around with a guy before. It’s just Hollywood, it’s not queer. Or anyway, that’s what other guys say with a shrug. It shocked Rick when he first came out from Nowhere, Missouri when he was fresh and green, long before  _ Bounty Law _ . He remembers well the first time he saw two guys fooling around; the lead actor of a forgettable crime film he was just an extra for blowing the producer in a make-up trailer. But he’s come to find out, that fairy stuff is just as common as the casting couch. He got an earful from the hairdresser at  _ Bounty Law _ whose name was Willem and who Rick thought was an okay guy even if he was a little flouncy and who would never have been welcomed where Rick came from.

_ “If I had a nickel for every blowjob I’ve gotten from a boy who says he’s not queer in this town,”  _ Willem said.  _ “I wouldn’t need to fluff wigs anymore." _

__

It’s not that.

But this isn’t just that.

This is love.

This would be queer as hell.

Free love and all that, the hippies said all the time. But  _ queer _ ? That’s a whole different ballgame.

He knows that as he stares down at Cliff, heady from that sweet air and the wine and Cliff’s bright blue eyes staring back up into his bright blue eyes and the way his rough hands are resting on that bare strip of stomach. He’s wanted Cliff so many times, jacked off so many times to the thought of it… 

“You got somethin’ on your mind, pard’ner?” Cliff says.

“No,” Rick says quietly. “N-no, nothin’. We should be gettin’ back.”

***

The pensione isn’t exactly the Beverly Hills Hotel. But it’s clean and it’s kinda homey and Rick’s room has a balcony that looks out on Florence. The view is beautiful. He’s got some money and people treat him like he’s a real star onset and it’s decent work. But Rick can barely appreciate it. His mind is on other things.

If he was just thinking about Cliff’s body, it would be so easy. But it’s not just that. It’s that back on  _ Bounty Law _ before Cliff even started driving for him, it got to where Rick’s day didn’t even begin until Cliff nodded hello on set in the morning. Then Rick could go off to make-up and feel ready for the day. It’s that when he’s feeling sorry for himself, Cliff knows just what to say. It’s that Cliff once confessed that he handed his wife some cash and said  _ sayonara _ and the rumor came from a completely bullshit story he told while loaded out of his head once. Now he can’t get rid of it, especially with his record, and it haunts him. His wife was never heard from again so she can’t dispute it. 

It’s that Cliff thinks Rick is talented and Rick assumed that was some hot air he said to be a good yes man until one time when  _ The Fourteen Fists of McCluskey _ was on TV and Rick found Cliff watching it in his living room, sitting forward on the couch, grinning from ear to ear, looking like he was impressed and occasionally murmuring enthusiastic compliments at the screen. 

Call Rick Dalton an egomaniac, but that was the moment he knew he was in love with Cliff Booth.

But if it’s just love and none of that  _ other _ stuff, he can say he loves Cliff like a brother. He can lie to himself like that. 

But this…

He thinks he’s going to lose his mind when there’s a knock at the door and when Rick crosses the room and opens it an inch, Cliff barges in. They’re both in their pajama pants and nothing else because the pensione runs warm.

Cliff’s got his hands on his hips and paces in a circle once as if surveying the place as Rick shuts the door, feeling like the walls might be moving. Cliff licks his lips and walks up to Rick, standing weirdly close. 

“I’m out of smokes,” Cliff says, and his voice is way too deep. “You got any Red Apples left?”

Rick swallows and clenches his fists. He wants to reach up and trace the lines of Cliff’s tattoos that decorate that chiseled body.

_ It’s Italy _ , Rick thinks to himself.  _ Sure it is. _

“I-I think so,” Rick murmurs. “On the sideboard.” But Cliff doesn’t make a move. He’s staring at Rick like he’s waiting for something. 

“You know you gotta nice mouth,” Cliff says in that deep voice. Cliff is staring at it. 

“Oh,” Rick breathes. “Th-thank you.”

Cliff smiles at him, slow and sly. Rick could become a movie star. He could get just as famous as Paul Newman and get an Oscar in each fist on top of it, and he would still never be as smug as Cliff Booth.

“You gotta nice everything,” Rick says and feels like he goes red all over, heat painful in his cheeks. 

But Cliff doesn’t laugh. Instead, his eyes grow dark and then he’s kissing Rick.

Kissing Cliff feels like being handed the world. Kissing Cliff feels like that one fleeting moment on a set when he’s in the zone and he’s killing it and people are looking at him with a little bit of awe like what he’s doing is somehow important or special. It’s that incredible high that Rick’s been chasing since he saw Gary Cooper in  _ The Westerner _ as a kid and decided he wanted to be in pictures someday and nothing else would do. Except that electric feeling only over lasts for about a second, and kissing Cliff goes on and on as their warm mouths slide together and Rick’s hands seem to slide up that gorgeous chest all by themselves. 

Cliff’s tongue is curling around his. Cliff’s  _ tongue _ .

Cliff pulls away and Rick’s never seen this expression on his face before. All that smugness is gone. He looks like somebody just smacked him over the head with a sock full of pennies. 

“C’mon,” Cliff murmurs. He clutches Rick’s shoulders and pushes him gently toward the bed. “Rick… Don’t let’s stop… C’mon…”

“O-okay sure,” Rick says. He tells himself it’s out of his hands now. This is Cliff’s call.

_ It was his idea _ , he thinks, as Cliff presses him down to the bed and tugs on his pajama pants. 

Rick’s hard,  _ painfully _ hard. He’s also nowhere near in as good a shape as Cliff but you’d think he _ was _ Paul Newman the way Cliff is looking at him with big, hungry eyes that rake over his body. 

“Goddammit,” Cliff murmurs, hopping up to do away with his pants before he climbs on top of Rick. “Oh goddammit…”

Cliff Booth is on  _ top _ of him and they’re naked as the day they were born and just that would be one thing but their cocks are sliding together just as their mouths were a minute ago and Rick can’t control the sounds he’s making or the way he’s breathing and holding onto Cliff like the world might end.

“Don’t stop,” Cliff says, in that deep void again. “Don’t you fuckin’...”

“I won’t, I won’t,” Rick says and clenches his teeth when Cliff wraps their cocks in his hand; that hand with its rough palms and little callouses. It’s an agonizing bliss and Rick throws his head back just as Cliff ducks down to tongue kiss his throat and suck a deep hickey in plain sight that no Western collar is going to hide.

“Fuckin’...” Rick’s voice cracks. “Make-up’ll be...pissed…if-if you leave a m-mark…”

Cliff chuckles into his neck and goddamn if just that doesn’t feel like sunshine on your best day in Los Angeles. “Let make-up be pissed,” Cliff whispers. 

They move together and Rick finds more of that agonizing ecstasy and they don’t stop for a long time.

And it’s love. More than a brother and something much more like a wife.

And three days later, Rick meets Francesca.

And a week later, he proposes.

  
  



End file.
